The TV Musical Part II: Covers

This is part two of a two part post on musical tv moments/episodes. Today we focus on TV shows featuring covers of songs in advance of tonight's Grey's Anatomy's musical episode, "Song Beneath the Song." Two weeks ago we looked at TV performances of original songs in advance of the Glee episode "Original Song." 

Grey's Anatomy has been notable for popularizing several songs, most notably The Fray's "How to Save a Life" and Snow Patrol's "Chasing Cars." Tonight, the show ventures into performing many of the songs that have appeared on the show, including those two.

While Grey's has the talent for musical performances (Sara Ramirez won a Tony award for her performance in Spamalot in 2005 while Chandra Wilson starred on Broadway in Chicago a few years ago), the show does not naturally lend itself to Glee-like production numbers. It will be interesting to see what direction they take this in.

It is certainly not the first time a scripted tv series has had its stars break out into well known songs. While Glee does this on a week to week basis, several other shows have featured out-of-character musical numbers from their stars.

While my intention was to include clips of some of my favorites as I did two weeks ago, most of these videos are not available online due to copyright issues, so we are limited to a list:

The Office has done two cast numbers of popular songs, with Kevin leading the cast in a rendition of Kenny Rogers' "The Gambler" in "Beach Day," and Andy leading the cast in Macy Gray's "I Try" in "Andy's Play."

The cast of 30 Rock performed a slightly altered version of "Midnight Train to Georgia" in "Episode 210," complete with a cameo from Gladys Knight herself.

The finale of Will & Grace included a somewhat odd duet of the classic "Unforgettable" from Karen and Jack.

Finally, before Emma was blinded by the catchy tune of the Starland Vocal Band's "Afternoon Delight" on Glee earlier this month, Arrested Development played the same joke in the episode "Afternoon Delight," featuring dueling performances by Michael and Maebe and Lindsay and George Michael.

What other musical performances would you add?

The TV Musical Part I: Original Songs

This is part one of a two part post on musical tv moments/episodes. Today we focus on TV shows featuring original songs in advance of tonight's aptly named Glee episode, "Original Song." On Thursday, March 31 we will look at TV performances of well known songs in anticipation of Grey's Anatomy's musical episode, "Song Beneath the Song."

Through its first 37 episodes, Glee featured no original songs, other than a brief number by Rachel about her headband a few weeks back. That ends tonight. Three original songs, "Get it Right," "Loser Like Me," and "Hell to the No," will be performed in tonight's episode. The first two songs have been released, although in full disclosure, as suggested by a handful of critics (most notably Myles McNutt), I have yet to listen to the songs in order to be able to experience them like the judges and Kurt and Blaine do tonight.

But Glee is not the first show to delve into the world of original song writing. Below are some of my favorites...

How I Met Your Mother has penned six original songs since then, but the first one was by far the best. Pehaps it was the element of surprise, or the constant Canadian references, or the rap break, or the robot, but it is hard to top "Let's Go to the Mall"

The lyrics of the Friends hit "Smelly Cat" may not have been quite as clever, but the show got as much out of the song as possible over the course of the series.

Scrubs went above and beyond with a full-out musical episode. Here is the big opening production number:



Finally, Community, which made a joke in the famous Paintball episode about Glee's lack of original songs, had a couple songs of its own, including the catchy "Getting Rid of Britta"

What other TV original songs would you consider hits?